Did you know that you can do all these things at a campground near you? Or your yard? And "going without access to the shopping mall or phones or TV or internet for a few days." I call that, "Saturday". Except for the mall part. "Not going to the mall" is something I call, "life".

" It was also an interesting experience in that people felt free to go without clothing. It was a safe place for people to experiment with many things that mainstream culture considers taboo."

Yes, one would never see reference to sex or women's bodies used to sell things. Never. Nekkid is so taboo that only places with oceans have nude beaches.

Burning Man was primarily a cultural experience and an art festival. It was a valuable experience in dry camping (no water other than what we brought) and going without access to the shopping mall or phones or TV or internet for a few days. It was also an interesting experience in that people felt free to go without clothing. It was a safe place for people to experiment with many things that mainstream culture considers taboo.

Have you been there? If not, STFU.

Carbon offsets were "invented" in the seventies by academics studying earth science, civil engineering, and in the inchoate area of environmental studies.. After you learn to use a dictionary you can learn to use a library. Oh My Gawd, there was CONTENT before the INTERWEBS. Try not to faint.

Indeed, burning man is basically hippie-free. It is indeed Objectivists wanna-bes and leering frat boys. Please do not insult perfectly good hippies, whose primary self-involvement was an extreme desire not to travel halfway across the planet and die trying to kill other people. And also a failure to bathe.

Ezra: I don’t see this sort of consciousness at Nascar rallies, political conventions or space shuttle launches yet.

Kind of lowering the bar there, aren't you? I don't think anyone said that Burning Man was less environmentally conscious than a Nascar rally, just that it tends to attract insufferably smug "performance artists" too drunk on their own sense of importance to see how ridiculously self-absorbed they are.

I will, however, attempt to update my stereotype, per Andrew's suggestion. Good show, there; what haunts the dreams of the average burner even more than the thought that they might be passé would be the thought of being boring middle-class drones, unredeemed by their week in a slightly more expensive Tijuana. Mmm, I can almost taste the flop sweat now.

Look, make fun of Burning Man all you want.

If by hippie, you mean a dreadlocked, unwashed, patchouli drenched pothead, then you're not going to find many hippies at Burning Man. If you mean something else by hippie, you're going to have to spell it out, but I suspect you're definition of hippie is pretty meaningless in that case. Hippies go to Bonaroo, Rainbow Gatherings and Phish shows (and the ones at Rainbow Gatherings are well aware of the hypocrisy involved in spending $300 to go to a decommodified event).

Hippies at Burning Man are vastly outnumbered by Objectivists and leering frat boys. Not that there are many Objectivists and frat boys. The typical burner is a cubicle-dwelling yuppie who thinks that taking some drugs, listening to crappy techno (not jam bands!) and having sex with strangers 1 week a year makes them some kind of edgy rebel.

They're not stupid though; they know perfectly well that Burning Man is nothing more than an expensive drug and sex filled vacation. The LLC (OMG! Hypocrisy! Burning Man is run by a corporation!!!) can spew whatever bullshit it wants about social consciousness, but it's not fooling anybody who goes to Burning Man. The only people who are taken in by the BS are the clueless bloggers who think Burning Man is full of brain dead hippies.

Please update your stereotypes accordingly.

I <3 Burners, I <3 big fires, and I <3 Ed. Isn't America great?!